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How To Hire a WordPress Developer in 2018

If you haven’t heard of WordPress, you might have been living under a rock. Even though it’s incredibly popular, that doesn’t mean that it is very simple to find a WordPress developer to hire, who really knows what they’re doing. Here, we'll show you what to look for in a top Wordpress developer.

If you haven’t heard of WordPress, you might have been living under a rock. Even though it’s incredibly popular, that doesn’t mean that it is straightforward to find a WordPress developer to hire, who really knows what they’re doing.

Because of the ubiquity of this software, there are quite a few novices who won’t be able to build you the website or plugin you need. The popularity also means, though, that you can find an expert WordPress developer to hire if you know what to look for. Or, of course, if you ask us to find him/her for you.

Tens of millions of websites are run on WordPress because it is open source and free to install, deploy, and upgrade. It also hosts over 50,000 plugins and numerous templates, both free and paid. These assist in reducing development costs, deployment time, and everything in between.

It is a content management system that currently manages about a quarter of all existing websites. This means that the WordPress community is huge; if you hire a WordPress developer, they will be able to find answers to almost every problem imaginable online, either by finding a pre-existing tutorial or asking a question on one of the many active WordPress developer forums.

WordPress is very customizable, and your developer should be able to extend pre-existing WordPress functionality to create the exact design and features that you want. Not only does this save them time, but it also means that your website is more likely to avoid unnecessary complexity.

This CMS is also quite easy to update or further customize if your website needs change down the line. Rather than build an entirely new site, your WordPress developer can tweak some areas and implement new plugins.

Some people who aren’t sure about web development seem to think that WordPress is only for blogs, but it’s important not to confuse it with its blogging platform, WordPress.com. The CMS, instead, powers many popular websites, including Yelp, Etsy, and Zillow.

Now that you better understand WordPress, let’s go over the reasons you’d want to hire a WordPress developer.

Why Hire a WordPress Developer

Its open-source, large community

As discussed, WordPress is open-source, which not only means that it is entirely free to download, install, use, and customize, but it also means that there is an almost endless amount of plugins, themes, updates, and customizations created by other software engineers. Additionally, with such a large community, your developers will always have someone to help them fix any issues.

SEO Friendly

One thing that’s very important for almost every single website is Search Engine Optimization. WordPress is SEO friendly, which means that you can optimize it to appear higher in the results on search engines like Google or Bing and, thus, help more people find your website. In fact, WordPress even has plugins that are made to help you improve your site’s SEO.

It’s secure

WordPress has a very high-security standard and is developed with security in mind. However, because of its popularity, many attackers concentrate on finding holes in it, specifically.

The good news is that WordPress is aware of this and regularly provides updates to help protect its customers. You and your developers should always install the latest version and patches to help keep your sites secure. Additionally, you can utilize numerous WordPress.org plugins built for security, make sure you don’t download any plugins that haven’t been updated recently or those not from a trusted source, and maintain a secure login and password.

The Top WordPress Interview Questions of 2018

Now that you know the benefits of WordPress, let’s find out the best interview questions to ask your potential developers. If you don’t want the hassle of finding and interviewing a qualified candidate, contact us and we will get you a verified expert.

Explain what template tags are in WordPress.

A template tag is code that tells WordPress what to do or get. For example,

In header.php the tag bloginfo(‘name’) tells WordPress to get “Site Title” from wp-options within the general settings on the dashboard. As these are used fairly often, your developer should be able to tell you the main template tags:

the_title() – to display the post title

wp_list_cats() – to display categories

get_header() – to get the header

get_sidebar() – to display the sidebar on the page

get_footer() – to get the footer content on the page

What simple steps should you follow for WordPress plugin development?

Your WordPress developer might need to create custom plugins for you. For this, they should generally know these rules:

Find a unique name

Setup a prefix

Create the plugin’s folder

Create sub-folders for PHP files, assets, and translations

Create the main plugin file and fill in the obligatory header information

Create a readme.txt file

Use proper constants and functions to detect path to plugin files

Create additional PHP files and include them inside the main one

Create activation and deactivation functions

Create an uninstall script

How do you create a custom post type? Give an example.

Custom post types can be added to WordPress using the register_post_type() function by allowing you to define a new post type, including its labels, supported features, availability, and more. Here is an example, although your potential developer’s might vary.

add_action( ‘init’, ‘create_post_type’ );

function create_post_type() {

register_post_type( ‘acme_product’,

array(

‘labels’ => array(

‘name’ => _( ‘Products’),

‘Singular_name’ => _( ‘Product’ )

),

‘public’ => true,

)

);

}

How can you active plugins using code? Give an example.

The way plugins are stored is within an array in the active_plugins option. This array consists of the file path to each active plugin. To activate a plugin, “you need to determine what its path will be, then pass that path to active_plugin($plugin_path).”

Additionally, before you can call active_plugin(), the plugin.php file from wp-admin/includes/ must be added and the plugin isn’t already active.

// Include the plugin.php file so you have access to the activate_plugin() // function

require_once(ABSPATH .’/wp-admin/includes/plugin.php’);

// Activate your plugin

activate_plugin($plugin_path);

Hire a WordPress Developer

If you’ve decided that you want to utilize WordPress and you’re on the search for a developer, there’s no need to deal with the hassle of searching for a qualified applicant and then interviewing them with questions you might not fully understand. Instead, let us send you a guaranteed, skilled WordPress developer without the bother.

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